France

French President Emmanuel Macron may have to pull out of the promise to decrease nuclear power in his country faster than he could pull out of Trump’s handshake. Energy and environmental experts, including the leading climate scientists in the world, were quick to point out that Hulot’s plan is not well-thought out. Phasing out nuclear power at all would actually increase carbon emissions, hurt the French economy and undermine the country’s plan to address climate change. ‘This doesn’t hold any water,’ says Dr. Jeff Terry, a professor of nuclear physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology. ‘They’re replacing [baseload, reliable] low carbon energy with low carbon energy that requires back-up 65% to 85% of the time. Everywhere that nuclear is closed it gets replaced by natural gas. That means France will probably get dirtier,’ Terry said. And France might also become more beholden to Russian and Middle Eastern natural gas, something it has been spared exactly because of its large nuclear fleet.

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